


A Billion Baby Galaxies (and wide open spaces)

by redacted_rills



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Fucking Deadlights Man, M/M, No Beta No Cry, Not Really Character Death, Psychological Warfare, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Richie Tozier Saves the Day
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-02-08 05:09:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21470572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redacted_rills/pseuds/redacted_rills
Summary: Then the whole opulent house melts away and she is still lying there in the sewers, just as dead and broken and none of it was real, it was all that clown, that stupid fucking clown and Richie is kneeling next to Beverly’s body weeping and…No, no - that isn’t right.  That can’t be happening because right now Eddie is leaning over Richie, staring down at him, and Richie can hear Beverly shouting in the background.“I think I killed it for real,” Eddie is saying.---OR Richie in the Deadlights, I know, I know, it's serious.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 3
Kudos: 38





	A Billion Baby Galaxies (and wide open spaces)

**Author's Note:**

> Main Title from "No One Said It Would Be Easy" by Cloud Cult  
\---  
Chapter Title from "Unexplainable Stories" by Cloud Cult

_No.This wasn’t right.It couldn’t be right._

_The claw goes through Eddie’s body like it’s nothing - like so much meat and muscle and viscera are just atoms and water to sluice through. _

_Richie knows that can’t be true.He knows that there are Very Important Organs doing Very Important Things, especially in the chestal region.He knows that a big fucking, gaping, goddamn hole in the middle of said region is not something you walk away from. _

_He knows, even as he sputters the blood from his mouth and stares up at Eddie, that Eddie is going to die from this. _

_And Eddie’s eyes - those warm brown eyes that Richie used to lie in bed and picture staring back at him with a heat behind them to match what was on a low simmer in Richie’s own belly - those eyes look down in horror like they know, too.Eddie is dying.Eddie is going to die and it was so EASY for that claw to rip him apart._

_Mortal wounds should take more fucking effort, that’s the point. _

_Richie mouth is already open to say the thought out loud when the world seems to shudder and swirl.He blinks again and again against the three lights that are spinning in the center of his vision like an afterimage imprinted on everything around him…he can’t see - he can’t…_

** _Beverly is terrified.She is TERRIFIED.She is running for her life through bedrooms and closets, out to a hallway and towards some staircase leading down.She can’t catch her breath, her breath doesn’t work, it was knocked out of her body against a wall and now can’t keep pace with her feet.She’s gasping and crying and running.Right as she reaches the top of the stairs, two strong hands connect with the small of her back and push hard.Beverly tumbles.Her broken body is twisted in grotesque ways at the bottom of the staircase. _ **

** _Above her, two uncaring pairs of eyes look down from the top of the staircase - a ridiculous, insanely large portrait of Beverly and some man Richie doesn’t know, but he can take a wild fucking guess.Beverly’s painted eyes stare down at her own body.And Beverly’s real eyes are open, unseeing, and are facing the far wall in a direction that should be impossible but for her snapped and broken neck. _ ** ****

** _Then the whole opulent house melts away and she is lying in the sewers, just as dead and broken and none of it was real it was all that clown that stupid fucking clown and Richie is kneeling next to Beverly’s body weeping and…_ **

_No, no - that isn’t right.That can’t be happening because right now Eddie is leaning over Richie, staring down at him, and Richie can hear Beverly shouting in the background._

_“I think I killed it for real,” Eddie is saying._

_In an instant, the claw punches through Eddie and Richie screams - he screams through the spurt of hot blood that lands in his mouth.Eddie’s lips are a perfect “O” of surprise as his body flings up, up, and away.Away from Richie, lying on the ground useless and screaming…_

** _Ben is alone, even though Richie sees him as if he’s right there next to him.He is trembling, huddled up against the rocks of the cavern that they are in.He looks like a man already defeated and OH, Richie understands.He understands when the Beverly that is not Beverly comes for him.When her hair is actual fire instead of just pretty words on a page.When her head splits back to show rows and rows, impossible rows, of teeth.Ben lets out one soft, horrified moan as the Beverly-that-is-It descends.Gives himself over to her - gives her all of himself, even in this. _ ** ****

** _The blood runs from her mouth, spills out onto the ground all around them, and Richie feels sick because he understands and he would do the same thing…knows that his weakness is just the same as Ben’s, the same blistering, open wound.Richie would let himself be taken if It offered warm brown eyes - a mouth in a perfect “O” - as the form that he would be sacrificing himself to.Out of all of them, Richie understands as Ben dies.He understands and he feels sick as Ben’s mutilated body falls onto the floor with a wet splat, the It-that-is-Beverly looking directly at Richie and grinning with rows and rows of teeth…._ **

_He feels sick he feels sick as the claw pushes its way through Eddie’s chest so easily, like nothing, like gauze, like air.Eddie gasps a perfect “Oh” and Richie screams as Eddie is flung away. _

_It’s not supposed to happen like this.He manages up to his knees, pushes up to his feet, breathes out a “Stop it” and starts running in the direction Eddie was thrown.He is desperate to make it over to his friend, his best friend, but the world under his feet is shaking and dripping away.Three circles shine through the center of his vision, dimming everything around, the cavern fades…fades…_

** _Mike is lost.His world is breaking around him - figuratively and literally.The bodies of his friends lie strewn about and Richie is standing next to him even though Richie can’t feel himself standing.Or rather, he’s standing inside of Mike…he IS Mike…he’s standing -_ ** ****

** _Mike stares but can’t seem to see as Bill runs to him, yelling and crying - the last left of the ones he had called back.The last of his friends that he had waited on for so long.That he had prepared for.All of that preparation; all of those years.Wasted.Wasted.This isn’t right. _ ** ****

_This isn’t RIGHT, Richie thinks as he stares up into Eddie’s eyes._

** _“It’s a trick,” Mike whispers to himself.“It’s a trick!”He says it louder - brushing Bill’s hands off of his shoulders and walking away from him.It’s all a dream, as he keeps his feet steady through the puddle of Ben’s blood, as he passes Beverly’s unseeing gaze and Eddie’s huddled mass.“It’s a trick,” as he walks towards the towering clown in front of him.“A trick, It’s tricking us,” as the tentacle wraps around him once again, as he feels himself lift up from the ground.As he is brought inevitably towards the rotting, stinking, drooling mouth. _ ** ****

** _‘And if it isn’t’ a little voice whispers. Richie can hear inside of Mike’s head.’If this is real then it’s better this way.Better to hand yourself over than live with all of the things you’ve had been wrong about.Better this way, it’s better’_ ** ****

** _But no, because this can’t be real.They couldn’t have been defeated - not like this. ‘We’ll do it right when it really happens,’ Richie hears Mike think to himself as the jaw descends, ‘when it’s the real thing, when we stop It’…_ **

_Richie is staring into Eddie’s eyes when the blood splatters against his glasses, across his cheeks, into his open and gasping mouth.He breathes blood down into his lungs. _

_Eddie’s whole body jolts with the punch of the claw through his chest, offering no resistance - no fucking defense.Richie gasps and sobs as Eddie - perfect “O”; big brown eyes - flies away from him to the other end of the cavern. _

_“Stop it,” Richie whispers, or thinks he does, or tries to.The words don’t come out loud enough for Richie to hear over the humming that’s echoing throughout his whole body. _

_Richie scrambles to his knees but he can’t get up, can’t breathe, it’s all happening too fast.He still has Mike’s thoughts in his own head and he can’t blink away the lights.He shakes his head and the entire WORLD vibrates - melts…sinks down and takes him with it…_

** _Bill is mad.He felt it - he felt the thread of of his own sanity snap at the same time the jaws bit Mikey in two.Bill sees them all - the people he led down here.His friends.His soldiers in the war that he started…all for Georgie…all for something that was already dead. _ ** ****

** _The ending had always been written.He was just too bad of an author to know what it was, even as he raced towards it.Too trapped in his own mind with the ending he wished it could be.He had always fought too hard to give his character’s a happy ending.He had never been one to be able to kill the things he loved._ ** ****

** _The clown is cackling and gurgling, lapping at the remains of Mike and making a show of snapping up every last bite.Even with the caves shaking dangerously all around them, It takes It’s time.With an exaggerated sigh of contentment, It throws the carcass to the floor and turns to face him.Bill squares his shoulders and readies himself.There’s no fear left and he feels a fierce surge of pride in that.The clown can fucking choke on his boring, brave, stupid meat. _ ** ****

** _Looking to the left, he sees a flicker.Like a bad signal on an antennae TV, the visage of Richie blinks in and out.Richie is looking horrified back at him - eyes bulging and teeth barred in an almost primal face of fear.Bill understands, although he can’t feel it himself.He would probably look the same if he wasn’t already insane._ ** ****

** _“S-stop it.If you can,” he tells Richie as he hears the clown charging towards him.“M-m-make it right.Stop It.”He doesn’t take his eyes off of the in-and-out image of his friend as the monster reaches him and the world closes sharp and fast like a curtain…_ **

_Richie is looking up into Eddie’s eyes.His warm, brown eyes.Richie’s own eyes are weeping and he has to keep blinking to keep Eddie from melting away right in front of him, but Eddie doesn’t go anywhere.Eddie is staring down at him and Richie stares back.The moment stays; it stretches.There is only coffee brown eyes agains blown, black pupils, so close and gazing deep into his own. _

_Any second now, the claw will come.Any second, the chest that is panting right above his own will be pierced and the body will be thrown.Richie know.He knows it all.He sits in that moment and his brain is split in a million pieces, he is everywhere at once.He is running with Bev and he is walking towards death with Mike.He is squaring his shoulders with Bill and he is crying with Ben. _

_He is living all of their gruesome deaths over and over, watching them die one by one and yet simultaneously - but he is also here.Now.In this moment, as he stares at Eddie and Eddie stares back at him._

_“Stop it.If you can,”Eddie tells him, hovering above him.Three spinning lights are pulsing behind his head and it almost makes a halo from where Richie is looking.But this isn’t right, because it is Bill who is saying that to Richie, in a completely different place - worlds away but right now.Eddie’s mouth is moving and he is saying -_

** _“S-stop It.”Bill is saying, staring across the cavern right at him before the terrible creature catches him up in its limbs and rips him apart._ ** **** ****

“Richie!” Eddie yelled from far away.

_“I think I killed it for real,” Eddie is telling him so close, his face bent low over his, one second before the kill shot hits._

** _‘When it’s the real thing,’ Mike is thinking as teeth meet flesh.‘When we stop It.’_ ** ****

“Hey, Rich, wake up,” Eddie’s voice seemed to echo as Richie felt himself being shaken.

** _“Stop It.Stop It.Stop It.”It’s a chorus.A million timelines in his brain forming one thought.Lights crashing in around him and the world is shuddering and spinning around and around and Richie is in a dozen different worlds and each of them he opens his eyes and -_ ** ****

Richie blinked and stared up at Eddie and Eddie stared down at him, grinning, proud.Brown eyes filled his field of vision, crinkled and warm and up over him, looming.Richie was in the same second, the one he’d had been living in for…hours?Days?Richie still wasn’t sure where he was, where his consciousness had settled. 

His pulse thrummed inside of him, he was practically vibrating with it, and there were words in the beat.

“Hey, yeah, there he is, buddy.”Eddie said, sitting back a little bit.

_Stop It.Stop It.Stop It. _

“Hey, Richie, listen - I think I got it, man.”

** _Stop It._ **

“I think I killed It.I did!I think -“

Richie moved.He grabbed Eddie and flung his weight to the side so that they rolled and Richie ended up leaning over him - faces inches apart.They stayed frozen for a moment.Eddie’s mouth was a perfect “O” of surprise from the sudden switch of positions, his chest pressing up against Richie’s with each breath.

_Protected._ Richie thought._Covered by my own._

This moment also seemed to last years.Decades.Lifetimes.Richie wasn’t sure if the Deadlights were still fucking with him or if he had always been just that god damn sappy and sentimental. 

In the last second that he had before the impact, Richie moved his hand. He watched as it floated through space and softly settled over Eddie’s open mouth. 

The blood had been the grossest part.Eddie would worry about contamination.

_See? _Richie would have said if there was time._See all the tiny ways I love you?_

When the claw punctured straight through Richie - his abdomen instead of right through his chest, because Eddie was shorter and compacter and cute, cute, cute - it felt just as easy as it had looked going through Eddie.Hardly anything at all, really.What was there to punch through?Just atoms and water and a whole lot of hot air that Richie carried around.

_Like this_, he thought, as he lowered his forehead and stared down into brown eyes.He wanted them to be the last thing he saw, it didn’t matter that they were wide and cold with horror now.Eddie’s breath was warm and wet as he screamed against Richie’s palm and his legs and arms thrashed underneath him.Alive.Protected._Exactly like this._

**Author's Note:**

> **tap tap** **tap tap** Hi...hello...testing testing - is this thing on? 
> 
> I've had an account for YEARS that I've only used for lurrrrking and I haven't written anything in approximately forever. So. Like. This is me just going for it. Like just fucking...writing that shit. Did it work??
> 
> Richie Tozier as a character slays me dead and the level of AMAZING fan fiction post IT Chapter 2 has been so incredible and inspiring. So here is my contribution to the altar of Reddie, as unworthy as it may be.
> 
> I have a 2nd part mapped out and hope to post within the week. Leave any comments/critiques. Non-betaed so please, please point out errors.


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